If one can understand, one should thank God

There is nothing like reading a medieval scholastic to remind yourself just how contemporary you really are. For instance, today our sermon was on the Incarnation. (An excellent sermon—really, really good—worked in Athanasius and the Nicaean Creed and the Council of Chalcedon—I highly recommend clicking on the Crossroads link to the right and downloading it ASAP, if you were not so fortunate as to have heard it live.:-) ) So I was motivated to come home, start a fire in the fireplace, and curl up with my cat and Anselm of Canterbury's On the Incarnation of the Word.

This work is a sort of open letter to Pope Urban II, refuting the claims of one Roscelin of Compeigne who thought that the Father and Spirit must have been incarnated too. He started out rather oddly, to my way of thinking.

“And I ask this lest anyone should think that I have been presumptuous, as if I should think that the strength of the Christian faith needs the help of my defense. Indeed, if I, a despicable little man, were to attempt to write anything to so many holy and wise persons existing everywhere in order to strengthen the foundation of the Christian faith, as if the faith should need my defense, I could of course be judged presumptuous and be perceived as someone to be laughed at.”

You know, perhaps it is rather arrogant of us, but I have yet to read in any modern work of apologetics an apology for writing it! Is it not cool to find someone who thinks of Christianity as so firm, so unshakeable, that intellectual defense is almost superfluous? We in the culture wars (or the edges of them, anyhow) tend to forget that not everyone has been in such an intellectual free-for-all as we are.

“And before I discuss the question, I shall make a prefatory comment. I do so to curb the presumption of those who, since they are unable to understand intellectually the things the Christian faith professes, and with foolish pride
think that there cannot in any way be things that they cannot understand, with unspeakable rashness dare to argue against such things rather than with humble wisdom admit their possibility....If one can understand, one should thank God; if one cannot, one should bow one's head in veneration rather than sound off trumpets.”

An energetic rebuke to ecclesiastical troublemakers, who in their self-confidence apparently always have and always will make nuisances of themselves. Understanding is a gift from God, as he rightly points out, and not the inviolable birthright of man, as per the high Modernists and Rationalists and Humanists.

“For some beginners, presuming to rise to the loftiest questions about faith, typically roduce trumpets, as it were, of knowledge trusting in itself. They do not know that ersons think they know something, they do not yet know, before they have spiritual wings through solidity of faith, how they should know it. ...'Unless you have believed, you will not understand,' [Isaiah 7:9]. “...And when [Paul] was instructing Timothy to serve 'as a good soldier' [I Tim 1:18], he added, 'having faith and a good conscience. But some, rejecting these things, have made a shipwreck of their faith' [I Tim 1: 19]. Therefore, no one should rashly plunge into the complex questions about God unless the person first have a solid faith with the precious weight of character and wisdom, unless a persistent falsity ensnare the person who runs with a careless levity through many little diverting sophisms.”

Ayup. Yup. Free will debate, right there. Somebody...maybe Augustine...or was it Socrates? or Cicero? Don't think it was Socrates, actually, since he was before Aristotelian logic...was concerned about the effects of teaching logic to students too immature to deal with it, who then use it like a lunatic with a sword, chopping up useful things with their new toy.

“And all should be warned to approach questions concerning the sacred text of Scripture carefully. Therefore, those contemporary logicians (rather, those heretical logicians) who consider universal essences to be merely vocal emanations, and who can understand colors only as material substances, and human wisdom only as the soul, should be altogether brushed aside from discussion of spiritual questions. Indeed, the power of reason in their souls, which ought to be the ruler and judge of everything in human beings, is so wrapped up in material fancies that they cannot extricate themselves from the fancies.”

Look! There's nothing new under the sun! I think that denial of universal essences might be an early form of postmodernism and the colors a version of materialism. :-) I'm not sure what he's talking about with the human wisdom only being the soul, but I'm getting a great mental image of medieval logicians getting hopelessly cocooned in sheer rainbow-embroidered cloth, kind of like Delenn in B5. :-)

More seriously, I really like Anselm's emphasis on approaching the Scriptures rightly and reverently. One should submit oneself to them and try to understand them rightly and humbly. They are, after all, true and sufficient for life and godliness. But he might go a bit far. If you think certain people are unfit to understand Scripture—there you have a problem. Some people indisputably are blinded and will use them wrongly, but are we then to judge who can and cannot access them? Do we deny learning to people because they don't have the faith, or do we give people as much truth as we can in the hopes it will increase their faith? The Spirit changes the heart; all we can do is be faithful to proclaim the truth. “How can they believe if they have not heard?”

I've got to go with the Reformers here. If you give the people the Bible, some of them will use it wrongly, and heresies will pop up. But isn't God willing to risk that? How can we do less? I'm modern enough to want learning to be available to anyone willing to chase it, but medieval enough to set up guidelines, normative ways to go about it. I consider this blog post a case in point. I, a mere receptionist in the mountains of New Mexico and a girl at that, am reading one of the greater thinkers to come out of Christendom—and arguing with him!

So how do we curb this arrogance leading to heresy, if not by declaring some people unfit to read Scripture? Are we doomed to endless freshmen classes ignorantly wrangling over foreknowledge, and a few veering into Open Theism? Anselm argued that dumping the hard questions on people without the faith to deal with them actually led them, the people, to shipwreck their faith. Is our way, then, a failure of love toward our weaker brothers?

Does, therefore, “Credo ut intellegam”-- “I believe so I might understand”--actually limit knowledge, or does it just set up one as ontologically prior to the other in the learning process? I think it's a true saying, but I don't think I want to take it where Anselm did.

“I believe, Lord; increase my faith!” If one can understand, one should thank God.